Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn reported yesterday that the company will not reach its goal of 20,000 Leafs sold in all of 2012. Nissan was pretty confident throughout the year despite declining sales, and refused to give up the notion that it could double last year's sales until now.

"The forecast we have given ourselves for the year will not be reached," said Ghosn.

For all of 2011, Nissan sold 9,679 Leafs. After nearly achieving 10,000 sales, it declared a new sales goal of 20,000 in 2012 -- doubling the previous year's.

While Nissan had its best sales month in October 2012 with 1,579 sold, the overall year was pretty disappointing. So far, Nissan has only sold 6,791 for the year, making it impossible to even reach last year's 10,000 mark let alone doubling that.

Nissan has even tried to lure customers in this year with price cuts. It took $3,250 off the price tag of each 2012 Leaf model starting in August. This is a considerable jump from the $850 discounts it was giving back in January. The 2012 Leaf starts at $36,050.

In addition, Nissan reduced lease costs of the 2012 Leaf from $249 per month to $219 per month with $2,999 down for 32 months.

Despite this failure to meet the mark, Nissan isn't giving up. In a video last month, Nissan said it now aims to sell 1.5 million EVs cumulatively by 2016.

While the Leaf seems to be withering in terms of sales, its competitor, the Chevrolet Volt, is doing quite well. In the first seven months of 2012 alone, the Volt was already at 10,666 sales. According to Plugin Cars, the 2012 year-to-date sales for the Volt is at 19,309 units -- nearly hitting Nissan's goal of 20,000 for the year.

General Motors (GM) recently said it plans to start building 500,000 cars with electrification technologies annually by 2017. It also developed a new way to use Volt batteries (which have been retired from the road) to power homes during blackouts. GM partnered with automation and power technologies company ABB Group as well as Duke Energy to find useful applications for EV batteries after they've been exhausted in vehicles.

The end result was a unit that contains five Volt lithium-ion battery packs that can provide two hours of electricity to three to five U.S. homes during a blackout. According to GM, the unit can provide 25 kilowatt hours of power and 50 kilowatt hours of energy.

When you see $169 a month + tax lease deals, you know it's in trouble. Plus the previously known cheap battery cooling system. This was well before the Arizona complaints regarding permanently damaged batteries. I never heard anything about those batteries being eligible for a warranty replacement. I personally wouldn't spend close to 40K on a Nissan.

"Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be." -- Steve Ballmer